Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have a chance to participate in today's debate. The motion reads:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should lower the tax burden on Canadians and offer interest relief to student loan holders in order to address the brain drain crisis which is forcing Canadians to move to the United States where unemployment rates, income tax rates and student debt levels are lower and the standard of living is 25 per cent higher than in Canada.
When it comes to a vote we in the New Democratic Party will vote against the motion. To me it does not make much sense at all. I am not saying it is totally wrong but it does not make much sense.
First, the motion refers to the brain drain. Do we actually have a brain drain in this country? Interestingly enough Statistics Canada says that we do not. In a recent report from Statistics Canada, according to Mr. Ivan Fellegi, the so-called brain drain is in fact a brain gain. He acknowledges that Canadian skilled workers are leaving the country, with 11,000 knowledge workers having left Canada in 1995, 5,600 to the U.S. of which 1,600 were doctors and nurses. But evidence shows that there is a net brain gain if one considers that Canada has more immigration of skilled workers from the rest of the world than it loses to the United States and other countries.
That same year 34,300 knowledge workers came into the country from the rest of the world. In 1996, 42,600 knowledge workers came to Canada.
Participants in a recent C.D. Howe Institute conference examining this issue concluded that there was no particular problem in Canada with a brain drain.
It is fair to say that the evidence—and I think all of us will acknowledge that Statistics Canada is probably one of the best statistics gathering centres in the world—tells us that part of the premise of this motion is actually incorrect. So set that aside.
As my friend across the way indicated, student debt problems are certainly very serious for tens of thousands of young people, but access to higher education is probably even a greater issue that we should confront. We have to find ways and means of easing the debt burden so many young people have accumulated as a result of pursuing their higher education goals.
I wonder if it is not time for us as a nation to get bold and actually strike away the whole issue of having tuition fees at all. This is not a particularly unique idea. Sixteen of the OECD countries already are tuition free. The majority of OECD countries have tuition free colleges and universities.
A few years ago as a society we determined that a grade 12 education was what was required to be a contributing citizen in the economy of the time. I think all of us would agree that grade 12 is now the minimal standard. Probably grade 16 or grade 18 makes more sense in terms of what is required to become a contributing citizen in the knowledge based economy of the 21st century.
Why not have tuition free universities and colleges? I think my friends in the Reform Party—although I stand to be corrected—are proposing tax cuts to the tune of $2.6 billion. What is interesting is that that is the exact amount of money Canadians spend on tuition fees each year.
We have a choice. This is what the business of politics is all about. Do we give across the board tax cuts of $2.6 billion to everyone, rich as well, or do we invest it in education and training for Canadians? That is the fundamental question we have here between political parties.
We say we should invest it in young people. We should invest it in Canadians. We should invest it in the human resources of the country. It is fair to say it would be the best investment one could make, as other countries have already determined.
Another point however is that tuition fees account for about $2.7 billion annually. If we were to introduce an inheritance tax, which virtually every industrialized country in the world has with the exception of Canada and one or two others, and we exempted the first $1 million in inheritance and taxed only an inheritance above $1 million, we would collect on an annual basis $2.8 billion. This would cover the cost of tuition fees for every student in this country.
In other words, if we did what virtually every other industrialized nation does, if we collected money from the vast inheritances some people receive with the first $1 million being tax exempt, we would bring into the central government coffers the equivalent of all the tuition fees in Canada. It seems to me that would be worthy of some consideration.
We are going to have a budget in a few days. I hope the Minister of Finance sees the value of investing in young people and others who are pursuing better education and training opportunities, and takes this bold step and does away with tuition fees. Fund it from this new tax that virtually every other western industrialized nation has in place today.
It is rather interesting that this motion comes from my friends in the Conservative Party who Canadians totally rejected a few years ago for actually bringing this nation to its knees economically. There were massive cuts to education, massive cuts to health care, massive cuts to social programs, debts skyrocketing. Canadians said “We have had it with these guys. We are going to toss them out so far that we can hardly see them”. There used to be Tories packed into this place. Now there is a little group down at the far end. Then they were replaced.